LED Light, HBC and ALH warning with 2020 CX-5 Signature

ddingle

Member
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2020 CX5 Sig
I have had a few issues with my CX 5 over the last year or so. Replaced the drivers side mirror motor, The rear door motor and most recently the cylinder head. I am getting used to heading to the dealer. Luckily all have been under warranty. Since I now have 42000 miles I am concerned about recent amber lights on the dash for LED lights and also the amber headlight which can be the auto high beam device or the adaptive headlight pointing as you steer mechanism. I hadn't noticed it last winter and although it might be coincidental since the cylinder head replacement I have had both of the mentioned warning lights on a couple of times. It has been extremely cold here while these warnings occurred. It goes off during the next drive. I do have a heated garage so not sure how that plays a role. During the warnings the adaptive lights no longer move, but are still on. In hindsight I now recall a guy flashing his high beams at me just after the warning lights came on the first time. I am wondering if other people have had a similar issue with a 2020? I have read of older 2016 models with adaptive lights that seemed to be affected by the cold. I know the light assemblies are lots of money so trying to get a heads up before I go in to the dealer again.
 
Firstly your headlights have the mechanical AFS, not the full-electronic ALH in Mazda’s terms. AFS has been outdated like the Xenon headlights and almost every car manufacture has switched to ALH with arrays of LEDs for high-end headlight application.

Since the AFS uses motors moving the light left-and-right, and up-and-down, when weather is very cold it could affect their movement, hence the AFS warning light. But HBC has no mechanical moving parts, it could be a different cause to trigger the warning light.

Your 2020 CX-5 Signature has 42K miles and it has no new-car warranty. If everything goes back to normal after the weather warms up, I wouldn’t bother to spend money and check these problems at your Mazda dealership. Not only these problems aren’t easy to diagnose, but also they could be expensive to fix.

Would you mind to elaborate you cylinder head replacement experience? Coolant leak? Oil leak? Or point us where in related thread if you’ve already posted your experience?
 

Would you mind to elaborate you cylinder head replacement experience? Coolant leak? Oil leak? Or point us where in related thread if you’ve already posted your experience?
Did some search and found your related posts. CEL was on for miss fire and low compression on cylinder 3? Your 2.5T seemed to have different symptom than others with head replacement, although I’ve seen others who had the entire 2.5T engine replaced due to the low compression on certain cylinder in early days before the TSB came out.
 
Firstly your headlights have the mechanical AFS, not the full-electronic ALH in Mazda’s terms. AFS has been outdated like the Xenon headlights and almost every car manufacture has switched to ALH with arrays of LEDs for high-end headlight application.

Since the AFS uses motors moving the light left-and-right, and up-and-down, when weather is very cold it could affect their movement, hence the AFS warning light. But HBC has no mechanical moving parts, it could be a different cause to trigger the warning light.

Your 2020 CX-5 Signature has 42K miles and it has no new-car warranty. If everything goes back to normal after the weather warms up, I wouldn’t bother to spend money and check these problems at your Mazda dealership. Not only these problems aren’t easy to diagnose, but also they could be expensive to fix.

Would you mind to elaborate you cylinder head replacement experience? Coolant leak? Oil leak? Or point us where in related thread if you’ve already posted your experience?
Thanks for the response. The weather is warming up here and will continue to monitor the warning light situation. It kind of irks me that the car seems to have as mentioned a series of issues. There were older CX 5s with cold weather issues with the auto tracking lights in this forum, but as you say those were probably different technology. The CEL came on and after discussions and a reset at the dealer I drove it for a few days and CEL for cylinder 3 came on again. The dealer followed direction from Mazda to test the compression and #3 was quite a bit lower than the others. Mazda recommended head replacement. The slight rough idle I was experiencing before went away with the new head. I was hoping some other 2020 owner would have had a similar issue with the light warning and came to some conclusion.
 
Thanks for the response. The weather is warming up here and will continue to monitor the warning light situation. It kind of irks me that the car seems to have as mentioned a series of issues. There were older CX 5s with cold weather issues with the auto tracking lights in this forum, but as you say those were probably different technology. The CEL came on and after discussions and a reset at the dealer I drove it for a few days and CEL for cylinder 3 came on again. The dealer followed direction from Mazda to test the compression and #3 was quite a bit lower than the others. Mazda recommended head replacement. The slight rough idle I was experiencing before went away with the new head. I was hoping some other 2020 owner would have had a similar issue with the light warning and came to some conclusion.
Thanks for the info on your head replacement. Some new car may have a series of issues more than other exactly the same vehicles. I’d say you’re an unlucky one and nothing you can do about it. Some car owners once they encountered a major problem such as engine or transmission replacement, he or she just traded the car in for something else. I may do the same as I do believe when there’s a major problem on a fairly new car, that car is doomed to have more problems than others. Luckily so far I haven’t had such problem other than my previous 2001.5 VW Passat GLX with a 2.8L V6 and a 5-speed manual. The engine from Audi was consuming 1 quart of oil per 800 ~ 1,200 miles since new, but VWoA kept refusing the warranty fix, as the industry guideline is using 1 quart of oil per 1,000 miles is normal. I dumped that car at 55K miles which considered very early to my standard.

BTW, if you noticed the AFS and HBC warning lights not far away from the head replacement, it may worth the time to have the Mazda dealer check them out. You can say the problems may be related to the head job, because you haven’t had this problems before. At least they may waive the fee to diagnose the problems.
 
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